Monthly Archives: June 2019

I'm sitting here at Gate 45 at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, NC. This is a great airport. I'd use it for all my future airport needs but I suppose I'd have to move to Greensboro to make that work. Doesn't sound practical, does it?

Due to some careless oversight on their part, American Airlines actually had my reservation. Someone's getting fired for this.

My flight is scheduled to take off at 12:50 but it's been delayed…to 12:56. I asked why and a nice lady told me it was because of "mandatory crew turnaround time." When the crew is finished for the day, there's a specified amount of time they must have off before they can be sent out on another flight. I guess that extra six minutes of nap time makes a big difference.

So why has American Airlines been canceling flights faster than a TV network axing shows I worked on? A reader of this site named Craig (just Craig) just sent me what seems like a sound explanation…

American Airlines recently sued the TWU-IAM, the union representing their mechanics. AA claimed the union has staged an illegal work slowdown that has led to 650 unnecessary flight cancellations and over 1,500 unnecessary maintenance delays. All told, 125,000 customers have been affected.

Sounds right to me…and no, I'm not mad at the union. They might be being unreasonable but so might Management. I don't know enough about the situation to say. It could even be both at fault. What I do know is that my plane is about to board early. Blog to you later.

I spent much of today…well, it started with having to straighten out another mess caused by American Airlines. Having failed in their mission to prevent Sergio Aragonés and me from getting to North Carolina, they decided to try and stop him from getting home. That got solved and as I write this, he is indeed home. I can't wait to see how they're going to try and stop me tomorrow.

I drove from Charlotte (where Heroes Con took place) to Mt. Airy, which is where I'm writing this now.  I spent most of the day with my former neighbor, Betty Lynn, who has known me since I was 1.5 years old.

Betty had an amazing career as an actress — on stage, on radio, in movies and on television. She did so many things and doesn't seem to mind that 99 out of 100 people she meets just want to talk about her years as Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show.

Some years ago, Betty retired to Mt. Airy, the city Andy G. grew up in, the city on which Mayberry was loosely based. Since life always imitates art imitating life, the city has taken on some of the show's landmarks and has become Mecca for lovers of the program. They flock there and especially to this place…

I drove Betty over so she could show it to me and we got, of course, the royal treatment. I took a lot of pics inside and you'll see them on this site before long.

Betty is — this is not a secret — 92 years old and she often needs a wheelchair. I was pushing her from my rental car towards the museum when a visiting family approached and asked, pretty please, if Betty would allow a photo of her and the two young girls in the family. Of course she would. She was so nice to those people, answering their questions and appreciating their love of the show. Ron Howard comes to Mt. Airy every few years but him aside, she's the only actor from the series you'll ever catch there…and therefore, kind of the by-default spokesperson for all who appeared on it. That family went home with some lovely memories.

Betty and I spent our time together plowing through our own lovely memories from the decades when we lived next door to each other…and also there was all that catching-up on what's happened to us since. It's been quite a while. I'm so glad I made this trip to see her again and remind her how much I love her.

I intend to come back…and she wants me to bring Amber next time. Of course, that will depend on American Airlines because I can't come back if I can't get home. If they screw up my ticket tomorrow, I may just stay here and get the room next to Betty's at the Assisted Living Home. I'll bet you she's still a great neighbor.

The battle over abortion may be back and bigger than ever in the coming months. Ed Kilgore has prepared a nice explainer about just what that battle is all about. Personally, I think a lot of it is not about the well-being of women or the children they birth, and is mainly about who's running the country and setting the social order.

I may be wrong but it seemed like at one point, the end of the line to meet Sergio and to get him to sign something was somewhere in South Carolina. It was at the very least in some other Zip Code. I don't think he got to leave his table and see some of the convention so this post is for him…

Sergio, you missed wandering the halls and seeing a high percentage of tables not manned by dealers selling books but by other artists and writers selling and signing their wares. I can't recall another convention where the "Artists Alley" part so dwarfed the "Sell Comics" part. If you were there to fill in your collection, there was plenty of the latter. But if you mainly wanted to meet creators and get them to write their names on their creations, you'd come to the right place.

I really enjoyed roaming the premises talking with folks I knew, by reputation if not by prior contact. Among them were Klaus Janson, Steve Saffel, Kevin Nowlan, Tom Grummett, Andy Hirsch, Neal Adams, Colleen Doran, Athena Finger, Keith Tucker, Jerry Ordway, Mike Royer, Billy Tucci, Charles Vess, Joe Giella, Craig Yoe, John Beatty, Steve Rowe and I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of people…like, say, Don Rosa. That's Don and me in the photo below and I was a lot happier throughout my time at Heroes Con than I appear to be in the picture.

I guess I judge conventions largely on their mood. The mood at Heroes Con seemed very, very pleasant and friendly, making it a great place to spend two days. Ringmaster Shelton Drum and his staff do a great job of making not just folks like you and me feel welcome, Sergio. Seemed to me that everyone who walked in the door felt welcome. And like you, I really enjoyed that barbecue last night at Shelton's store.

Lastly and speaking of food: I learned that the on-the-bone chicken at Bojangles Fried Chicken is really, really good and the Chicken Tenders, coated with too much batter and spice, are not. This will be handy to know any time I am in North Carolina because the state seems to have more Bojangles than people. But it's been a great trip, making me very sorry we missed the first day of it. Maybe next time…

We haven't had a good Disney Medley on here for a while…

Andrew Sullivan discusses Donald Trump's skill at lying. I wonder what percentage of his flock really and truly thinks he is an honorable man and what percentage thinks, "Yeah, he lies. But I'll tell pollsters I trust him because he's going to give me the America I want and whoever the Democrats put up won't."

There may even be a percentage in there that really and truly admires the lying or rationalizes, "That's what you have to do today to win." Winning is all-important in America today, especially Trump's America. Of the many insults he hurls at anyone who doesn't support him, "loser" is the most frequent.

For what little anything I think may be worth, I don't think Nancy Pelosi is against impeachment. I think she has a game plan that will lead up to it at the proper moment…and Trump knows that.

It  was Day One for Sergio and me but Day Two for Heroes Con, a fun-crammed gathering here in Charlotte, N.C., the city I may have to call home for my remaining days on this planet.  That's if the airlines of America continue to conspire to keep me off their planes.  Seems like a nice place but I do have that cat to feed back in Southern California.  She might mind.

(Don't worry.  Someone is feeding her in my absence.  They just might not be willing to do it forever.)

Heroes Con is different from a lot of comic conventions in that it's about comics…and nothing else.  The featured guests are not movie stars or TV stars.  They're folks who do comic books.  That means that to be there is to be surrounded by people who love and/or create comic books, which always makes for a happy crowd…and boy, was it a big one today.

I was scheduled to host panels all day but I passed one over to someone else so I could tend to some of the things I was unable to do yesterday.  On the first one I did do, I got to interview three of the best inkers of comic books of all time.  They are, left to right in the above photo, John Beatty, Mike Royer and Klaus Janson.  The fourth guy is Your Obedient Blogger.  I'll write more about this panel when I'm not on the laptop here but it was nice to chat with three fellows who not only do what they do well but are able to explain why they do it the way they do.

The rest of the day? Signing stuff, seeing old friends and making some new ones…three other panels…and a nice man brought me a lunch of Bojangles fried chicken which you can't find in states where you can usually find me. The Bojangles website says North Carolina has 315 stores which strikes me as damned selfish. You'd think they could spare one for Los Angeles, preferably within walking distance of my house.

I'll write more tomorrow.

Eleven minutes to remind you why we miss a regular dose of Jon Stewart. Well, some of us do…

I'm so weary from the events of the day that I didn't tell you that not only did two different airlines cancel several flights and reservations we had for today and yesterday but they've also started canceling our return flights.  I hope I like it here in Charlotte, North Carolina.  I may be here the rest of my life.

I'n guessing it's a new policy of the Trump Administration: As soon as airline reservations are made in the name of Mark or Sergio, that flight must be canceled. An amazing gent named Doug Merkle was busier than an I'm-Too-Tired-To-Make-Up-A-Joke today. He filled in for me as moderator on several of the panels I couldn't host because I wasn't there while simultaneously trying to rebook our reservations as fast as various airlines could cancel them. Sometimes, they canceled those flights; sometimes, just our seats. But somehow he got ahead of them and I'm typing this from a hotel room across from the Charlotte Convention Center. We'll be there for the last two-thirds of Heroes Con. Whew! is right.

Someone last night tweeted about our situation and directed that tweet towards whoever runs the American Airlines account on Twitter. Here's what they got back…

In instances like this, I think I'd rather not get this kind of "apology."  I get bothered by efforts that fall into the category of, literally, "the least you could do."  Sometimes when I post here that someone I know has died, I get messages that say, "Please convey my condolences to the family."  I know this is cynical but I see something like that and I think, "Wow. You cared enough to spend the three seconds to type that."  Often, the folks who want me to convey those condolences of theirs do have an e-mail address for the family but, well, you know…that might take ten seconds.

And writing something specific to the moment…something that applies to the deceased…hell, that could take up to a minute.

The person who sent the American Airlines "apology" had my Twitter address in the tweet to which they were responding. Instead, they sent it to someone else to pass on to me. How minimally thoughtful of them.

I probably sound more rankled by this than I am. It's kind of standard these days. You're wronged and then someone who had nothing to do with the wronging is in charge of apologizing for it without actually caring or doing anything to prevent it from happening to someone else. Or even to you again.

I guess I'm annoyed that we're no longer surprised by this kind of thing. If that offends you, I'll have my assistant apologize without really meaning it.

…but Sergio and I have. Despite the collusion of not one but several major airlines, we are in Charlotte, North Carolina. We'll be at Heroes Con tomorrow and Sunday.

It was rough getting here but we couldn't disappoint our fans. Or Thelma Lou.

After being screwed over by American Airlines canceling our flight to Charlotte at the last minute, Sergio and I are finally on our way there.

And just to keep its reputation intact, American Airlines has just canceled our return flights. Honest.

Back in this message, I linked to a video on how orange juice is made.  Here's another look at the same vital topic…

There are a lot to choose from but I think I'll take his leap from "I never colluded" to "I'll collude in the future if I get the chance!" Fred Kaplan has the details on this one.

Thanks to some miracles of ticketing — and the conscientious, heroic Heroes Con crew — Sergio Aragonés and I will be at Heroes Con on Saturday and Sunday. Needless to say, we are not flying there on American Airlines.  For more on this gala event, see here.

For those of you who are coming to get books or subpoenas signed, I will be at my table (#1102) from 10 AM to 11 AM on Saturday and then you may be able to catch me in Room 208B between the panels I'm hosting there for the rest of the day. On Sunday, I'll try to be at the table from 11 AM to Noon and again from 4 PM to 6 PM. Sergio will be at his table (#1103) for most of those two days. And yes, this should be the real Sergio, not one of the skilled Sergio impersonators we sometimes send out for personal appearances.

But most importantly, the day after the con, I'm coming to see ya, Thelma Lou!